Hezbollah Backs Syria, Challenging Lebanese Opposition

By HASSAN M. FATTAH

Published: March 7, 2005

The Lebanese faction Hezbollah declared its full support for Syria on Sunday, directly challenging opposition groups a day after Syria promised to gradually withdraw troops from Lebanon.

Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, spoke to reporters on Sunday in his stronghold in southern Beirut, breaking weeks of relative silence over the crisis concerning Syria's presence in Lebanon. He called for Lebanese to ''express their gratitude'' to Syria by joining a demonstration on Tuesday against United Nations Resolution 1559, which calls for Syria's withdrawal and Hezbollah's disarmament.

''I invite all Lebanese to this meeting to refuse foreign interference,'' he said.

Although he acknowledged that a Syrian pullout was a reality, he emphasized that Syria must be able to leave with honor -- a reaction to repeated statements by the Bush administration and Lebanese opposition groups calling for a quick and complete pullout of Syrian forces.

Sheik Nasrallah's statements came a day after President Bashar al-Assad of Syria announced an eventual pullout from Lebanon, promising an immediate redeployment of Syrian troops eastward to the Bekaa Valley, followed by a second move to areas ''near the Lebanese-Syrian border.'' Late Saturday evening, Syrian officials clarified Mr. Assad's statements, insisting that the redeployment would be to the Syrian side of the border.

Mr. Assad and President Emile Lahoud of Lebanon are expected to meet with senior government officials in Damascus on Monday to outline the details of the pullback. Reuters reported that Lebanon's defense minister, Abdul-Rahim Murad, said Syrian troops would begin moving Monday, though there were no signs on Sunday of any preparatory movement at bases in many Lebanese towns.

For weeks, Hezbollah, which maintains a well-armed, 25,000-man militia in Lebanon and commands the support of hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims in the country, has been a political wild card. Throughout the recent crisis, in which public outrage led to the breakup of a strongly pro-Syrian government, the group kept a relatively low profile, never wholeheartedly offering its backing to a Syrian presence and never extending its hand to the opposition, which has sought to get Hezbollah into its camp.

''This was really a warning to the opposition that they were getting a little carried away by all the talk of democracy and all the attention,'' said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at Lebanese-American University in Beirut. ''It was Nasrallah's way of saying, 'We are here, we have been quiet long enough, and are now going to have our say.'''

Hezbollah, whose name means Party of God, a guerrilla group started in the early 1980's with financing from Iran, has built broad support by providing social services and health care. Recently, it has tried to refashion itself as a political party, with 13 members in Lebanon's Parliament.

In many ways, Hezbollah's fate has been tied to Syria. The group, branded terrorist by Washington, forged an alliance with the country in the early 1990's, after the end of Lebanon's civil war, and the Syrian government has allowed it to continue its battle with Israel on the condition that Syria maintain military and political constraints on its operations. As a result, the group has been able to maintain its armed strength, even though competing Muslim, Druse and Christian factions in Lebanon were formally disarmed.

On Sunday, Sheik Nasrallah reiterated Hezbollah's traditional stand that it could never give up its arms ''because Lebanon needs the resistance to defend it.'' But he offered a legalistic solution to opposition figures, reminding them to call Hezbollah a ''resistance movement'' instead of a militia, which would be bound by the call for disarmament in Resolution 1559.

Trying to strike a conciliatory note, he said he agreed with the opposition's goals, but took issue with its methods. The opposition's tacit support of the Security Council resolution, he said, served American and Israeli aims to ''bring Lebanon back to a state of chaos and find excuses for foreign intervention and push some Lebanese to call for international intervention.''

He railed against rumors that opposition figures had been in discussions with Israeli politicians, saying that even if Lebanon accepted peace with Israel, Hezbollah would not.

Hezbollah's plans for the demonstration on Tuesday are a notable departure from its traditional outpourings, which draw hundreds of thousands of Shiite Lebanese into Beirut's southern suburbs. For the first time in Hezbollah's recent history, said Professor Saad-Ghorayeb, the party has planned to hold the demonstration in central Beirut, near Martyrs' Square, where the opposition has recently held rallies. Ostensibly, the location will encourage Lebanese from other factions to join. But ultimately, she said, it would serve to contrast the opposition's tens of thousands of followers with Hezbollah's huge support base in the country.

Photo: Supporters of Syria in Beirut drove yesterday by a billboard of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon, who was assassinated last month. Mr. Hariri opposed Syria's domination of Lebanon. (Photo by Adnan Hajj/Associated Press)